Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Ann Clements is 35 years old, single & middle-aged before her time. She works as a typist in an office on Henrietta Street in London, lives in a depressing bedsitter ruled by her unpredictable landlady Mrs Puddock. Ann's routine is rigid & unforgiving. She washes her hair one evening, mends the next, surreptitiously does her ironing the next evening (cooling the forbidden iron by waving it out the window). If money is short, she's reduced to poached eggs & tea for lunch by Friday. On Sundays, Ann goes to Balham to have lunch with her pompous, hypocritical parson brother, Cuthbert, & his family. Her annual holiday is a boring two weeks at Worthing with Cuthbert, his wife, Eleanor, & their daughter, Gloria.

One day, Ann wins a prize in a sweepstake. She didn't even realise she had a ticket as a colleague had bought it for her instead of the raffle ticket that she usually indulged in. Encouraged by her sympathetic boss, Mr Robert, & urged on by the disapproval or indifference of her colleagues, Ann decides to book a cabin for a Mediterranean cruise. Each step seems to take on an inevitability. Mr Robert encourages her to go, even lending her the money for the deposit, Miss Thomas (who bought the ticket & feels entitled to have an opinion on how Ann spends the money) gets her back up so that she finds herself insisting on the holiday & on going alone, which is even more reprehensible. Ann is whirled into the travel agent's office by a group of people as she's gazing into the window & before she knows it, she has a cabin, a passport, instructions about luggage & she finds herself committed.

Ann felt that a new spirit had settled down upon her, the new gay spirit of adventure. She had reserved a cabin for herself on a wonder cruise. For the second time that day she found herself outside Charing Cross, and she knew that she had had no lunch.

The cruise begins badly. Ann is frightened by the thought of the lifeboat drill, scared of the chief steward, realises all her clothes are wrong & gets seasick. Her fellow passengers are unattractive people & she's surprised to meet Oliver Banks, a man she's met before, sitting on a park bench on a sunny day in London. Soon though, the atmosphere & the wonder of the places she visits begins to change Ann. She becomes aware of the special atmosphere of the cruise & recognizes its effect on her fellow passengers,

It was sea-fever. The beginning of a romance at sea; it was the strangely subtle atmosphere of a great liner urging forward, bent on pleasure.

Every day leads to a new departure for Ann. In Gibraltar she has her hair shingled; in Marseilles, she spends far too much money on clothes; in Malta, she bathes in the sea, practically alone, with a man. Ann's conversations with Oliver turn all her ideas about life upside down & she realises how restricted her life has been. He pushes her into new experiences, from dancing to walking through the ruins of Pompeii to bathing in a secluded cove in a bathing costume that Cuthbert would have thought indecent.

Instantly she knew that she had never dared to think for herself, but had allowed her father and Cuthbert to mould her views and set their own opinions in her mind, like little flags pinned to a map to denote the route. She had never formed a single opinion of her own, and it dismayed her.

After being left behind in Venice by the ship, Ann travels to the Dolomites with a new friend, Eva Temple, & the farcical situation that develops there is only resolved by the arrival of her luggage. The ending is very satisfying with almost everyone getting their just desserts.

She had started the cruise as a woman, a woman nearing middle age, who had had nothing out of life, and less out of love, and who expected nothing. She had been awakened vividly in the Alameda by an old hag who had warned her to take what she could. She had taken what she could. And now she had become a pretty girl who tempted strange young men to kiss her. Whatever you might say, the change was a gratifying one to your vanity.

Wonder Cruise is a delightful Cinderella story but there's more depth to the characterization & the social commentary than might be expected from a romantic novel. Ursula Bloom has some very sharp & satirical things to say about Ann's fellow passengers, from Mr & Mrs Spinks, who have made their fortune in trade & can't resist telling everyone how much money they have, to Mrs Duncan who's frankly man-hunting for her daughter, Ethel, determined to snap up an Italian Count at least, to the Frenchman who only came on the cruise for the food. Then there's the kind but disappointed ship's doctor, the Assistant Purser who is determined to make a conquest among the passengers & odd little Miss Bright whose idea of a good day out is a tour of crypts & church vaults with a monk. Bloom also makes some spiky, clear eyed observations of the predatory motives of the passengers & crew on board; this is not a fluffy romantic novel by any means.

Ann's delight in the European cities she visits, the gradual relaxation of her inhibitions & blossoming into an attractive woman is subtly done. As each layer of her old habits, old thoughts & the old restrictions that her upbringing & her own timid nature had imposed on her begin to disappear, Ann becomes more confident in her own feelings & decisions. Even when her judgement is wrong about a person or a place, she comes to realise that she has to take responsibility for herself & her life & break away from the old ways that had imprisoned her in deadly routine & the expectations of unpleasant, unworthy people like Cuthbert.

Corazon Books are planning to reprint more of Ursula Bloom's novels & they kindly sent me a review copy of Wonder Cruise.

Sunday, April 24, 2016

Tomorrow is Anzac Day & I've been reading this new anthology of First World War poetry edited by Tim Kendall so I wanted to feature a war poet in Sunday Poetry today.
Last week I watched this excellent TV program about Ivor Gurney, one of the soldier poets of the Great War (George Simmers's blog is a wonderful resource about the Great War, by the way). Gurney survived the war but spent the last 15 years of his life in an asylum. He was a wonderful poet & musician. He studied at the Royal College of Music & wrote some beautiful songs. Here's a link to Bryn Terfel singing Sleep, one of Gurney's five Elizabethan songs.

One of the poems featured in the program was this one, The Silent One. It was written long after the war, when Gurney was in the asylum. His war experience was central to his life & he revisited it in his poetry during the first years in the asylum. His failure to get his poetry published depressed him further & he seems to have stopped writing after the mid 1920s. He died in 1937.

Who died on the wires, and hung there, one of two -Who for his hours of life had chattered throughInfinite lovely chatter of Bucks accent:Yet faced unbroken wires; stepped over, and wentA noble fool, faithful to his stripes - and ended.But I weak, hungry, and willing only for the chanceOf line- to fight in the line, lay down under unbrokenWires, and saw the flashes and kept unshaken,Till the politest voice - a finicking accent, said:‘Do you think you might crawl through there: there's a hole.'Darkness shot at: I smiled, as politely replied –‘I'm afraid not, Sir.' There was no hole, no way to be seenNothing but chance of death, after tearing of clothes.Kept flat, and watched the darkness, hearing bullets whizzing –And thought of music - and swore deep heart's oaths(Polite to God) and retreated and came on again,Again retreated a second time, faced the screen.

Thursday, April 21, 2016

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of Charlotte Brontë's birth, here is one of her poems. Charlotte is one of my favourite writers & Jane Eyre is one of my favourite books, I've read it at least a dozen times & I always find something new in it.. I've written about her other novels - Shirley, Villette & The Professor - & every time I read a new biography or see a new adaptation of Jane Eyre (why has no one ever adapted Villette?) I go back to the books again.

This poem, which is probably from the Angrian stories Charlotte wrote from childhood, is full of the Romanticism & barely suppressed passion of her best work. I also love the evocation of the natural world, the "soft and golden light", "the last bird's belated flight" & the melancholy of the speaker's sound sleep "Beneath the churchyard tree".If thou be in a lonely place,If one hour's calm be thine,As Evening bends her placid faceO'er this sweet day's decline;If all the earth and all the heavenNow look serene to thee,As o'er them shuts the summer even,One moment ­think of me !

Pause, in the lane, returning home;'Tis dusk, it will be still:Pause near the elm, a sacred gloomIts breezeless boughs will fill.Look at that soft and golden light,High in the unclouded sky;Watch the last bird's belated flight,As it flits silent by.

Hark ! for a sound upon the wind,A step, a voice, a sigh;If all be still, then yield thy mind,Unchecked, to memory.If thy love were like mine, how blestThat twilight hour would seem,When, back from the regretted Past,Returned our early dream !

If thy love were like mine, how wildThy longings, even to pain,For sunset soft, and moonlight mild,To bring that hour again !But oft, when in thine arms I lay,I've seen thy dark eyes shine,And deeply felt, their changeful raySpoke other love than mine.

My love is almost anguish now,It beats so strong and true;'Twere rapture, could I deem that thouSuch anguish ever knew.I have been but thy transient flower,Thou wert my god divine;Till, checked by death's congealing power,This heart must throb for thine.

Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Ethel Livesey was born in Manchester in 1897 as Florence Elizabeth Edith Swindells (an ironic name given her future career). She led a life of criminal deception & fraud. Married eight times, mostly bigamously, divorced five times, she had over forty aliases. Ethel (I'll call her Ethel as that was her most famous alias) was a sociopath who "couldn't lie straight in bed" as one of her victims said of her in court. She lived in a fantasy world where she was a famous film star or opera singer & often took her aliases from the names of famous people. She felt she was entitled to an easy life & she had no compunction about the means she used to achieve it. Freda Marnie Nicholls has written the book as faction, which is my one real problem with the telling of Ethel's story, but I'll come back to that.

Ethel's life of deception began when she married a young soldier, Alec Carter, in 1914. He was a few years older, a stationer who worked with his father. Alec enlisted in 1916 & went to the Front, leaving Ethel with his family in Manchester. Ethel was pregnant & soon became bored, especially as she disliked her in-laws. She was able to access Alec's pay by using a ring paper, which was given to the dependents of soldiers serving overseas. Instead of helping out with expenses at home, Ethel spent the money on clothes & partying. When Alec was reported missing in November 1916, Ethel took to her bed. She gave birth to a son, Frank, a few weeks later but refused to care for the baby. One night, she slipped out of the house & disappeared. She never saw her son again. Soon, Ethel was living with another soldier & was in court for the first time when a boarding house keeper reported them to the police for fraud. Ethel convinced the magistrate that she had been taken advantage of when ill & plied with drink. He believed her & the charge against her was dismissed.

Ethel married Ray Ward just a few months later, another soldier (bigamously as it turned out because Alec wasn't dead). She soon had two ring papers to draw on after meeting yet another soldier while Ray was on active service. She successfully juggled her two identities for a while but slipped up & ended up on a good behaviour bond. Ethel also made a practice of deceiving shopkeepers into giving her credit. She was attractive, well-spoken & confident. She had no compunction about obtaining clothes & jewellery on false pretences. I won't go through her whole career but at one time or another, Ethel stowed away on a cruise ship, attached herself to a vice-regal party by claiming to be an opera singer, pretended that she had entertained the Duke & Duchess of Windsor on the French Riviera, claimed to have nursed survivors of the Blitz during WWII, was connected to the famous Coats cotton family & married one man after another, usually without obtaining a divorce from the previous husband.

She spent time on the Isle of Man with Thomas Livesey & she changed her name by deed poll as his wife wouldn't divorce him. She convinced him to put all his assets in her name so that his wife couldn't access them & then walked out, taking everything with her. She even claimed to be the wife of an Australian Test cricketer. She had a few stints in prison for fraud & obtaining goods by deception but, when released, she just moved to a new town, adopted a new name & started all over again. The worst thing Ethel did was abandon her children. She had two children, Frank & Basil, when she was married to a man called Anderson. She would leave the boys, aged only six & five, for days at a time, leaving a shilling on the table for every day that she planned to be absent. One day, she just didn't come back. It was during the Depression & neighbours looked after the boys until Social Services took over.

Ethel's biggest crash came after her planned wedding to a Sydney civil servant, Rex Beach, was called off in spectacular circumstances. It was December 1945 & Ethel was spending the money she'd stolen from Thomas Livesey. The wedding was to be one of the social events of the season with extravagant amounts of money spent on food, flowers & the wedding dress. There was maximum publicity in the newspapers leading up to the event but, on the day of the wedding, Rex called it off after a friend alerted him to Ethel's past.Ethel was still being pursued for unpaid bills relating to the wedding years later. She eventually served more time in jail for fraud (there were outstanding warrants for her in most states of Australia) & then disappeared again after briefly reconnecting with her sons.

I read The Amazing Mrs Livesey in a day. I know it's a cliche but it's a real page-turner. However, I was disappointed at the author's decision to fictionalise parts of the narrative, making it faction instead of either fact or fiction. The Author's Note at the end of the book made it all even murkier.

Written as narrative or factional history, real people and actual events have been woven together with fictitious character names, and imagined conversations to bridge occasional gaps in the storyline or account for unnamed people.

I was expecting a non-fictional narrative & was surprised by the fictional scenes. I wish the Author's Note had been at the beginning of the book rather than the end. It was easy to see which chapters had been sourced in court documents & newspaper research & this was the part of the book I really enjoyed. Marnie Nicholls also writes that there were several stories where Ethel might have been the culprit but these couldn't be proved so she left them out. However, the story of the stowaway opera singer, also unverified, was too good a story to leave out! I suppose I was expecting a bit more intellectual honesty from a book marketed by the publishers as biography. I can understand why Marnie Nicholls didn't write a novel as the facts are just too unbelievable. I was reminded of Jane Austen's advice to her novel-writing niece, Anna,

"I have scratched out Sir Thos. from walking with the other men to the stables, &c. the very day after his breaking his arm - for, though I find your papa did walk out immediately after his arm was set, I think it can be so little usual as to appear unnatural in a book." (Letter. August 10th 1814)

No one would believe Ethel Livesey's story if it was written as fiction & I'm impressed by the amount of research that has gone into the book. Marnie Nicholls heard of the story from Ethel's granddaughter, who had done a little digging while searching for her father, Frank's, birth certificate. Frank had talked about his mother but was very bitter about her abandonment of him as a child. The most amazing find was a Cinesound newsreel that Ethel paid for in the aftermath of the abandoned wedding. The newsreel was shown in cinemas around Australia & featured Ethel proclaiming her innocence & pleading for understanding in her troubles. She also takes a swipe at "Sydney society" who have abandoned her. Ethel seems to have been a completely heartless, amoral woman who had no compunction about the shopkeepers she defrauded, the friends she stole from, the men she deceived or the children she abandoned. The most amazing thing about the amazing Mrs Livesey was that she managed to elude detection & keep deceiving people for as long as she did.

Sunday, April 17, 2016

I just had to end the week of the 1938 Club with a poem. I had trouble finding a poem so I've chosen a song instead, written by a poet so I've decided it counts! I'm a Stranger Here Myself by Ogden Nash. It was set to music by Kurt Weill for the musical One Touch of Venus.Here is the lovely Ute Lemper singing it.

Tell me is love still a popular suggestionOr merely an obsolete art?Forgive me for asking, this simple questionI'm unfamiliar with this partI am a stranger here myself

Why is wrong to murmur, "I adore him"When it's shamefully obvious I do?Does love embarrass him, or does it bore him?I'm only waiting for my clueI'm a stranger here myself

I dream of a day of a gay warm dayWith my face between his handsHave I missed the path? Have I gone astray?I ask and no one understands

Love me or leave meThat seems to be the questionI don't know which tactics to useBut if he should offer

A personal suggestionHow could I possibly refuseWhen I'm a stranger here myself?

Please tell me, tell a strangerMy curiosity goadedIs there really any dangerThat love is now out-moded?

I'm interested especiallyIn knowing why you waste itTrue romance is so freshlyWith what have you replaced it?

What is your latest foible?Is Gin Rummy more exquisite?Is skiing more enjoyable?For heaven's sake what is it?

I can't believeThat love has lost its glamorThat passion is really passeIf gender is just a term in grammarHow can I ever find my way?Since I'm a stranger here myself

How can he ignore myAvailable condition?Why these Victorian views?You see here before you

A woman with a missionI must discover the key to his ignitionAnd then if he should makeA diplomatic proposition

How could I possibly refuse?How could I possibly refuseWhen I'm a stranger here myself?

Thursday, April 14, 2016

Presteignton Hydro is not a fashionable, top class resort. The twenty or so permanent residents are retired people of the professional middle classes - widows, spinsters, military men. Run by Dr Williams & his staff, the Hydro caters for those with small private incomes & an infectious love of gossip & scandal. Like any closed community in a Golden Age murder mystery, the residents encompass many different but familiar types. Miss Astill, the sheltered spinster with religious leanings; Miss Brendon, the elderly invalid losing her sight but kept informed by her devoted companion, Miss Rogers; Mrs Napier, who pretends that she has lost the use of her legs although no one really believes this; snobbish Lady Warme, a widow who flaunts her love of opera on the strength of one visit to La Scala but whose husband made his money in groceries; Mrs Marston, who is at the Hydro with her irritable invalid husband & two young daughters & my favourite character, would-be detective novelist Mrs Dawson, who is trying to become a writer to make enough money for her son, Bobby's education.

The male residents are less inclined to gossip but are just as eccentric. Admiral Unwin, who loves crosswords & Colonel Simcox, always needing help with his knitting. The Admiral is being pursued, if you believe the gossip, by Nurse Hawkins & the colonel is besotted with a newcomer, a beautiful young woman, Antonia Blake. Another new resident, Sir Humphrey Chervil, is also interested in Miss Blake & the gossips are enthralled by the potentialities of this love triangle. After a concert, organised by Lady Warme, where Miss Blake obligingly steps in at the last moment as accompanist, she & Sir Humphrey are observed lingering in the lounge. Next morning, Miss Blake is discovered in the lounge by the housemaid. She's dead, with a steel knitting needle plunged into the back of her head.

Inspector Palk & Sergeant Jago take up the investigation & soon arrest Sir Humphrey when Miss Blake's jewel box is found on the top of his wardrobe. However, when a second murder occurs, with the same modus operandi, the Inspector has to consider the possibility of a second murderer imitating the first or could he have arrested the wrong man? The investigation is very entertaining as almost every person he interviews accuses someone of the crime. The atmosphere of gossip & suspicion is very well observed & the claustrophobia that the Hydro induces, especially as the residents are forbidden to leave, creates tension. A new resident, Mr Winkley, who fancies himself as an amateur detective, upsets the residents with his blundering questions but the police seem to be no nearer a satisfactory solution. There are so many unanswered questions - why was Miss Blake at the Hydro at all when she never took any treatment? What connection could Miss Blake's murder have with the second murder? If they were committed by the same person, then Sir Humphrey must be innocent & the murderer must still be at the Hydro but Inspector Palk believes the evidence against Sir Humphrey to be strong.

Mrs Dawson unfortunately seems to have plotted out Miss Blake's murder in her notebook before it happened but she is more concerned about plotting the second & third murder for her novel because, of course, there must be more than one murder in a detective novel, the public expect it. Mrs Napier may just be a nutty old lady looking for sympathy or she may be cleverer than we think. Nurse Hawkins was left alone with the victim of the second murderer & seems to have something to hide. Inspector Palk approves of the doctor's attractive secretary, Miss Lewis, but is she just a bit too clever? It proves difficult to discover the murder weapon when nearly all the women & the Colonel knit & there are knitting needles in every room in the place. The murder method demanded a certain amount of medical knowledge but as Dr Williams' medical books lie scattered in every room, it would be easy enough for anyone to discover the vital information. Harriet Rutland manages to keep all her characters distinct in the reader's mind which isn't easy to do with a cast as big as this. Inspector Palk is a dogged detective who nevertheless needs a little help in coming to a solution but it's all very satisfyingly wrapped up in the end.

This is an excellent mystery with a lot of humour & a satisfyingly
convoluted plot. I also enjoyed the acute social commentary, that the
retired middle classes tend to take people on trust & believe that
they are who they say they are as they're too polite to make enquiries. I was reminded of Agatha Christie's
similar point in her 1950 novel, A Murder is Announced, that no one
produces letters of introduction anymore so how do you know who they
really are? This is very convenient, of course, for a writer of
mysteries & I was interested that, far from being a post-war
phenomenon, it could be just as true in the late 1930s.

I was sent a review copy of Knock, Murderer, Knock! by Dean Street Press. As well as Knock, Murderer, Knock!, which was published in 1938 & therefore perfect reading for the 1938 Club, they've also published Rutland's two other novels, Bleeding Hooks & Blue Murder.

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Henry Warren is an unhappy man. In his early 40s, he's a merchant banker, running his family firm. He travels constantly, his marriage is miserable & he feels disconnected from life. When he discovers that his wife is having an affair with an Arab prince, he gives her an ultimatum. Leave the prince, leave London & the meaningless social life she enjoys so much, & move to the country to give their marriage one more chance. She refuses & Warren decides to start divorce proceedings. He makes plans to close up his London house &, on an impulse, sets off for the north of England for a walking holiday. His health is suffering, he has insomnia & feels that vigorous exercise will cure him. He sends his chauffeur home when they reach the North & plans to walk in the Borders for a week or so. However, he's taken ill on the road & a lorry driver takes him to a hospital in the town of Sharples.

Sharples was once a thriving industrial town. Five years before, the ship building company closed down, the factories closed & most of the adult population has been out of work ever since. As Warren recovers in hospital from a twisted gut, he learns about the long term effects that the Depression has had on the people & the town. When he is admitted to hospital, unshaven after several days on the road & with no money after his wallet is stolen, he's assumed to be a tramp looking for work. He allows this deception, telling the nurses that he's been in America & been sent back to Glasgow after losing his job. It's a common story & easily believed. He is horrified to realise that many of the other patients in the ward are unable to survive relatively routine operations because of malnutrition after years of just surviving on the dole. He begins to investigate the town as he recovers & an idea to rejuvenate Sharples begins to take shape.

He becomes friends with the Almoner of the hospital, Alice McMahon. A young woman of about 30, she has lived in Sharples all her life. She studied law at Durham but returned to Sharples when the Depression hit, unwilling to get on with her own life & career while her home town was suffering. The hospital barely survives on charitable donations as the patients can't afford to pay for their care. Alice is angry that her community is suffering & falling into despair because of economic conditions they can do nothing about. She worries about the future of towns like Sharples & the families she knows there if ship building never revives & nothing else takes its place.

Warren buys the shipyard & uses his contacts with a Balkan government (which includes some spectacular bribery in the form of a jewelled green silk umbrella) to get a contract to build oil tankers. His plans don't run smoothly though, with the workers malnourished & not able to work at full capacity for some time. He also has to engage in some questionable behaviour to get the company up & running, a decision that comes back to haunt him later. What I found interesting was that Warren, who has been a banker all his life, working in the family firm, has no qualms about his actions, even when the consequences are personally devastating. It's an interesting moral question. How far is it permissible to go to achieve a greater good? The change in Sharples once the shipyard is operational again is overwhelmingly positive but a little dodgy dealing is needed to make it happen.

The story takes place from 1934-37. The Depression is at its height
& there's no sign of WWII on the horizon as yet although there
is talk of totalitarian regimes & Chamberlain is Chancellor of
the Exchequer. Warren is 43 at the start of the book & he served
in the Great War so I imagine he was born in around 1892.

Ruined City was published in 1938 & I'm so glad I had a chance to read another Nevil Shute for the 1938 Club. He's one of my favourite authors, I find his writing quite plodding & pedestrian at times but compelling for all that. I think it's the accumulation of detail which some might find boring but I enjoy. Warren meticulously works out his plans for the ship building business, calculating percentages & interest rates. He goes to Latavia in the Balkans & spends his time losing money at cards to corrupt politicians & dancing with a Corsican girl called Pepita whose connections are integral to the success of the deal Warren needs to get an order for the oil tankers. His moral compass is thoroughly shaken up but the interest in his project turns his life around & gets him through the depression he'd fallen into after his illness & the divorce from his wife. Warren's relationship with Alice McMahon is also very delicately done. It's her passion for Sharples that inspires Warren's plans & the relationship that began as that of hospital almoner & indigent patient becomes one of friendship & partnership in the plan to reopen the shipyard.

Warren reminded me of another Shute hero, Donald Ross, in An Old Captivity, & his work as a seaplane pilot. Actually, I think all Shute's heroes have this trait of meticulousness in their work. Tom Cutter in Round the Bend was just the same. I've decided that Shute's men obsessing about business or their planes is the equivalent of women in novels being careful housekeepers. The image that often comes into my mind when I read Shute is of Jane Eyre refurbishing the Rivers' home when she comes into her inheritance. It's the domesticity & detail that I love, whether it's at home or at work.

I listened to Ruined City on audio, read by Gareth Armstrong. I enjoy his reading style very much. His reading of A N Wilson's Victoria was one of my highlights of last year.

Monday, April 11, 2016

As a way of jumping straight in to the 1938 Club, organised by Simon from Stuck In A Book & Karen from Kaggsy's Bookish Rambles, here are a few links to posts I've written about books published in 1938. I realised how many books I've read that were published in 1938 but lots of them were read pre-blog so I have no record of them.

It's not too late to get involved as there are some great short books, like Evelyn Waugh's Scoop, that could be read in a week.
George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia is a fascinating account of his service during the Spanish Civil War. The publication of the book in 1938, on the brink of another, much larger war, hopefully gave some people pause for thought.

Enid Bagnold's novel, The Squire, is a beautifully-written novel about a woman's total absorption in her own thoughts & feelings as she prepares to give birth.

Sunday, April 10, 2016

Still reading Kipling. I've been listening to Martin Jarvis reading Plain Tales From the Hills & I'm enjoying it very much. I'm listening to stories on the way to work & a couple before I go to sleep at night, especially if I've spent a lot of time that day looking at screens. So, I thought that an early Indian poem by Kipling would be perfect for today. The Story of Uriah refers to the Biblical story of King David, who lusts after Bathsheba & sends her husband, Uriah, to his death to get him out of the way. Apparently Kipling wrote the poem in response to a real life scandal during his time in India. The stories in Plain Tales From the Hills mostly take place in Simla, one of the hill towns where English families escaped the summer heat.
I need to read more about all this. I've read Charles Allen's Plain Tales from the Raj, Jane Robinson's Angels of Albion about the women of the Indian Mutiny & M M Kaye's memoirs of her life in India, Sun in the Morning, Golden Afternoon & Enchanted Evening (many years ago). On the tbr shelves I have Mollie Panter-Downes' Ooty Preserved, about another hill station, Ootacamund as well as a couple of novels, Paul Scott's Staying On & J G Farrell's The Hill Station.
But, as I'm currently reading four books, I'll probably just stick to the Plain Tales & dipping into the poetry for now, especially as reading Sarah Orne Jewett's A Country Doctor is leading me down the path of other Maine writers & I have enough to be going on with right now!

“Now there were two men in one city; the one rich, and the other poor.”

Jack Barrett went to Quetta Because they told him to. He left his wife at Simla On three-fourths his monthly screw. Jack Barrett died at Quetta Ere the next month’s pay he drew.

Jack Barrett went to Quetta. He didn’t understand The reason of his transfer From the pleasant mountain-land. The season was September, And it killed him out of hand.

Jack Barrett went to Quetta And there gave up the ghost,Attempting two men’s duty In that very healthy post; And Mrs. Barrett mourned for him Five lively months at most.

Jack Barrett’s bones at Quetta Enjoy profound repose; But I shouldn’t be astonished If now his spirit knows The reason of his transfer From the Himalayan snows.

And, when the Last Great Bugle Call Adown the Hurnai throbs, And the last grim joke is entered In the big black Book of Jobs, And Quetta graveyards give again Their victims to the air, I shouldn’t like to be the man Who sent Jack Barrett there.

Saturday, April 9, 2016

On the way to work yesterday morning, I was listening to the podcast of Richard Fidler's recent interview with Freda Marnie Nicholls, author of the new book, The Amazing Mrs Livesey. Mrs Livesey was a swindler, a bigamist & her life story sounded truly remarkable. I knew I'd bought the book for the library but I also knew there were reservations on it & I just had to have the book asap. I'm sure readers of this blog will sympathize. So, as soon as I got to work, I jumped on to Readings website & ordered the book. This was at about 7.30am. By 10.30am, they'd emailed me the invoice & when I got home at about 5.30pm, the book was on the doorstep! I was so impressed I emailed them to tell them. What terrific service!

Readings is one of Melbourne's best independent bookstores & I always try to buy from them, especially Australian titles. Their service is always great but I thought this was exceptional.

Meanwhile, I now have another book I desperately want to read when I already have several others half-read. You can read the blurb of Freda Marnie Nicholls' book here. Would you be able to resist diving right in?

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Doctor Thorne opens with the events of twenty years before. Henry Thorne seduces Mary Scatcherd, sister of the local stonemason. When she becomes pregnant, her brother, Roger, beats Thorne so badly that he dies. Tried for murder, he is convicted of manslaughter when the facts of the case became known, & serves six months in jail. Henry Thorne's brother, Thomas, is the local doctor, a steady, sober man in comparison with his wicked brother. Dr Thorne pities poor Mary Scatcherd in her sad situation. When Mary's former suitor still wants to marry her & emigrate to America, he does so on the condition that she leaves her daughter behind. Dr Thorne pledges to bring up baby Mary & care for her & Mary Scatcherd agrees.

Twenty years later, Mary Thorne has grown up beautiful, kind & the apple of her uncle's eye. She was sent off as a little girl to be educated but has lived with her uncle since she was 13. She is on terms of friendship with the local squire's family, the Greshams of Greshamsbury. Doctor Thorne is a friend of the Squire & is tolerated by his haughty wife, Lady Arabella, who never forgets that she is a member of the De Courcy family of Courcy Castle. Squire Gresham has squandered the fortune left him by his father. His daughters will have tiny dowries & his only son, Frank, will have to marry well to hold on to what's left of the estate. Marrying well means marrying money & Lady Arabella is soon scheming with her sister-in-law, Lady de Courcy, to bring this about. Lady de Courcy has invited Miss Dunstable, heiress of an ointment fortune, to Courcy Castle, & wants Frank to marry her.

Frank Gresham is a nice boy, that's the only way I can describe him. Fond of his family, conscious of his father's perilous financial position, loyal to his friends & eager to do the right thing. Frank is also in love with Mary Thorne. Lady Arabella has always disapproved of Mary's intimacy with her children, not only because she has no money. Her ambiguous social position is also a problem. The sad story of her parents has been forgotten by many & the young Greshams & Mary herself have no idea that she's illegitimate. However, once Mary is of an age to marry, she begins to ask her uncle questions about her origins.

Roger Scatcherd, the stonemason, has prospered. He is now a rich man, a baronet, living at Boxall Hill, land that once belonged to Squire Gresham, but was sold to pay debts. Scatcherd has been a friend of Doctor Thorne's ever since the terrible events of twenty years before. Doctor Thorne helped Scatcherd's wife & child while he was in jail but the Scatcherds know nothing about Mary. Sir Roger's health is poor because he's an alcoholic. His drinking bouts & irrational rages are undermining his constitution & he refuses to listen to Doctor Thorne's advice. Doctor Thorne has never told Sir Roger about Mary because he fears that the Scatcherds would want to take her away from him. He knows how unhappy Mary would be with Sir Roger & his wife & so he says nothing. However, when Sir Roger, after another bout of illness, makes a new will, leaving a fortune to his sister Mary's eldest child, but without naming the child, Doctor Thorne, as executor of the will, must tell Sir Roger the truth. The will leaves this eldest child the money if he or she outlives Sir Roger & his dissolute only child, Louis Philippe, who will inherit when he turns twenty-five.

Doctor Thorne is faced with a terrible dilemma. He knows that Mary & Frank are in love. He believes it is probable that Sir Roger will soon be dead as he refuses to stop drinking. Louis Philippe is well on the way to emulating his father & could very well die young, leaving Mary a considerable heiress. Sir Roger refuses to amend the ambiguous wording of the will. Should Doctor Thorne tell the Greshams of Mary's possible inheritance in the hope that they will allow Frank to marry her? What if Louis Philippe reforms & lives to a ripe old age? Frank & Mary would be left with nothing.

I loved this book. This was actually a reread as I read the Barsetshire novels over 30 years ago. I was prompted to reread it because OUP kindly sent me a review copy of the new edition. We haven't seen the new TV series here yet but I'll be interested to see it when it makes an appearance. After 30 years, it was like reading a brand new novel anyway. I was especially taken with the good humour of the narrator. I thought of him as Trollope just as I think of the narrator of A Christmas Carol as Dickens & I kept thinking of Trollope standing in the spirit at my elbow (as Dickens writes when the Ghost of Christmas Past visits Scrooge). Doctor Thorne is also a very funny book. Whether it's the satire of Lady Arabella & Lady de Courcy's attempts to find a rich bride for Frank & his attempts to evade them or Augusta Gresham's miserable engagement to Mr Moffat which ends with Frank horsewhipping him, much to the Squire's approval, the tone is amused & genial.

Trollope's descriptions are also pithy & very amusing. He describes Mr Winterbones, Sir Roger's confidential secretary as "a little, withered, dissipated, broken-down man, whom gin and poverty had nearly burnt to a cinder, and dried to an ash." He still tries too hard with some of his character's names, Dr Fillgrave, Miss Gushing, the easily bribed publican Mr Reddypalm & the political agents Mr Nearthewinde & Mr Closerstil. Doctor Thorne himself can be as prickly as his name when he feels he's being slighted & Mary had spirit & wit, she's no simpering young miss. I especially enjoyed her encounter with Lady Arabella where her pertness is on a par with Elizabeth Bennet's when she is confronted by Lady Catherine.There's also a very funny & satirical chapter consisting of letters between Augusta Gresham & her cousin, Lady Amelia. I don't think I remember another Trollope novel where the narrator is so very present with comments & asides.

There are some implausibilities in the plot. I can only think that Sir Roger's brain had been scrambled by drink for Mary's identity to be such a surprise to him.
Doctor Thorne had only one sibling, Henry, & Scatcherd knew his
sister was pregnant when Henry died. Even though he was told the child
was dead, where did he think the doctor's niece had sprung from? Also, I would think that Mary's illegitimacy might invalidate the terms of Sir Roger's will without all the agonising that the Doctor goes through about what to tell the Greshams. Actually Trollope amusingly heads off any legal quibbling by boldly stating that if the terms of the will are incorrect, they've just been wrongly described! The critics had been scathing about the legal detail of his previous novel, The Three Clerks, so he was getting in first in Doctor Thorne. Still, surely Mary Scatcherd's legitimate American children would have challenged the will? Anyway, it's Trollope's story & he tells us in so many words that it's his world & he'll do what he pleases with his characters.

I couldn't help wondering what Wilkie Collins would have done with the same material. Trollope lays everything out for us so that by about Chapter 10 we know all about Mary's parentage, the terms of Sir Roger's will & the potential implications for Mary & her marriage to Frank. We then have another 35 chapters where Doctor Thorne works through every possible moral implication of these circumstances. His scruples won't allow him to neglect Louis when he's made an unwilling trustee of the estate, or raise Mary's hopes by telling her of her possible inheritance.Wilkie would have made a mystery of every part of it with cliffhangers galore & I would have been on the edge of my seat. However, I was surprised how suspenseful the book was, considering that I already knew all the secrets & had a good idea of the ending. I read it over Easter & was glued to my chair for hours at a time.

Sunday, April 3, 2016

I keep tripping over Rudyard Kipling at the moment. After reading some of his war stories & poems, then his autobiographical memoir, Something of Myself, & finally tracking down the story about the stinginess of Henry VII (after reading the reference to it in The Daughter of Time again) he seems to be just on the edges of my mind.
I'm reading Trollope's Doctor Thorne at the moment & there was a reference to French brandy which made me think of the line Brandy for the parson, baccy for the clerk.

Then I was reminded of another line from the same poem, Watch the wall my darling when the gentlemen go by. Then that reminded me of Jane Aiken Hodge's novel (cover photo from here) which I remember reading & loving when I was a teenager. Sometimes I'm amazed at the way my mind works!
I couldn't remember who wrote the poem or what it was called but, on looking it up, discovered that it was Kipling - I should have known! This is A Smuggler's Song.

If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse's feet,Don't go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street,Them that ask no questions isn't told a lie.Watch the wall my darling while the Gentlemen go by.

Five and twenty ponies,Trotting through the dark -Brandy for the Parson, 'Baccy for the Clerk.Laces for a lady; letters for a spy,Watch the wall my darling while the Gentlemen go by!

Running round the woodlump if you chance to findLittle barrels, roped and tarred, all full of brandy-wine,Don't you shout to come and look, nor use 'em for your play.Put the brishwood back again - and they'll be gone next day!

If you see the stable-door setting open wide;If you see a tired horse lying down inside;If your mother mends a coat cut about and tore;If the lining's wet and warm - don't you ask no more!

If you meet King George's men, dressed in blue and red,You be careful what you say, and mindful what is said.If they call you " pretty maid," and chuck you 'neath the chin,Don't you tell where no one is, nor yet where no one's been!

Knocks and footsteps round the house - whistles after dark -You've no call for running out till the house-dogs bark.Trusty's here, and Pincher's here, and see how dumb they lieThey don't fret to follow when the Gentlemen go by!

'If You do as you've been told, 'likely there's a chance,You'll be give a dainty doll, all the way from France,With a cap of Valenciennes, and a velvet hood -A present from the Gentlemen, along 'o being good!

Five and twenty ponies,Trotting through the dark -Brandy for the Parson, 'Baccy for the Clerk.Them that asks no questions isn't told a lie -Watch the wall my darling while the Gentlemen go by!

Saturday, April 2, 2016

I don't know, you wait ages for a reprint of a favourite author & then three come along at once! After posting about Ursula Bloom on Thursday, I was pleased to hear from a friend in the D E Stevenson Yahoo group about the reprints of Elizabeth Cadell's books. Her grandchildren have started Friendly Air Publishing, & will be releasing Cadell's novels as eBooks. The first three are The Corner Shop, The Fledgling & The Cuckoo in Spring. I can't really say that Cadell is a favourite author as I haven't read any of her books but the reviews I've read around the blogs - such as the review here of The Corner Shop - make me think that I will enjoy her books.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned the eBook reprints of D E Stevenson but Endeavour Press have started to release some of her books with hopefully more to come. Stevenson fans have much to enjoy with paperback reprints already from Persephone, Sourcebooks & Greyladies.
Endeavour Press are also reprinting Marjorie Bowen. Does anyone else remember her? I have vivid memories of reading her biography of Mary, Queen of Scots over & over again but she also wrote historical fiction & ghost stories. Endeavour have also published an eBook of Angela Thirkell's historical novel, Trooper to the Southern Cross, not one of her Barsetshire novels butthe story of a journey to Australia on a troop ship.

More in the nature of forthcoming excitement, I'm very much looking forward to Scott's new venture in the world of middlebrow publishing. Scott blogs at Furrowed Middlebrow & he recently announced that he's about to begin his own imprint to resurrect some of his own favourite authors. There may be some clues in his own Possibly Persephone list here but several of these are back in print already. I would love Winifred Peck to be on Scott's list. I loved House-Bound (Persephone) & have enjoyed Scott's reviews of several of her other titles.